IRON MAIDEN 2026: band celebrates 50th anniversary on the road and announce tour dates
18-09-2025
IRON MAIDEN have announced the first dates of a very busy schedule for 2026, starting with a summer return to Europe to predominantly play festivals and also stadiums in countries and regions not visited in 2025. The subsequent month will see the start of visits to many other parts of the world, all of which will be announced later.
The initial European dates are as below and more headline festival shows will be announced by the festivals themselves in parallel with ironmaiden.com. It’s a busy year so following this there will be no Maiden shows in 2027.
Says Steve Harris – “We are all loving this RUN FOR YOUR LIVES TOUR. The fans have been amazing, the set list is perfect for the 50th Anniversary, the show is arguably our best ever and ticket demand was incredible with pretty much everywhere sold out and over a million fans attending. So we all thought we should play some more shows in Europe before heading out to other parts of the world later in the year.
Of course Simon Dawson will be joining us once again on the drummer’s stool, and both he and the whole band would like to thank our fans for the terrific reception you have given him on the first leg.
We’ve always enjoyed playing festivals, especially as we get to play to people who aren’t just there for us, and we love that challenge! So we decided to revisit as many great Metal festivals as we could get to in this period. Plus we will also get to play stadiums in Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria where we didn’t get to this year and have always loved playing to the passionate fans out there.”
Manager Rod Smallwood comments, “We were absolutely blown away by the overwhelmingly positive reaction of our fans and from across the mainstream media to the first leg of our RUN FOR YOUR LIVES TOUR. We knew we had created a special show, but the energy of all our fans at every single concert we played was picked up on by the band and I think we all experienced something really memorable, and arguably our best tour ever. Throughout our career festivals played a huge part, starting with Rock in Rio in 1985 of course, by enabling us to play in front of new fans and hopefully convert them to being Maiden fans, which, in the absence of radio or mainstream media helped enormously to increase our following. So this tour, based around most of Europe’s pre-eminent Metal fests, is also a huge thank you to those very festivals for playing such an important part in the fifty years… and counting… story of Iron Maiden.
Besides Eastern Europe we will also play some stadium shows in regions we missed in Germany (Hannover), France (Lyon-Décines) and Italy, the latter at Milan’s legendary San Siro Stadium, home of both AC and Inter Milan and we will, I am told, be the first ever Metal band to play there. It’s always great to break more new ground – even after all these years!!
You will note the schedule below just says UK SHOW for July 11th and there is a good reason for that! We are working on something special for our loyal UK fans including an extension of our Eddie’s Dive Bar concept we launched last year…so watch this space!
Fans will also notice we will play Paris La Défense Arena again on Mon June 22nd after already playing two sold out nights there this year to 75,000 fans… but there is good reason for that!
Yes, we know you have been asking, so we are going to film this special show for you and for posterity! We chose an indoor stadium to see the best of the production and also a great audience which we know Paris is and always has been for us. So we decided to return to Paris and hope fans there still want to see us! This will be our 31st show ever in Paris, it’s always been a bit special since we first visited there with KISS back in 1980!
Finally it was really special to see that the vast majority of our fans appreciated and respected our request to severely limit their use of phones at our concerts, ideally just keeping it in their pockets the whole time, especially in those standing areas in front of the stage. There were exceptions in a couple of places sadly but overall our fans’ understanding and cooperation made a colossal difference to the atmosphere of every show and increased the enjoyment enormously for the band and fans alike.
While we encourage our fans to follow this again at all our shows in 2026, in Paris specifically, we will be working with Yondr the company that creates phone free spaces where fans are given a secure locked pouch which allows you to keep your phone on you at all times. They will facilitate this process ultimately for the benefit of you, our wonderful fans and I am sure that, like all of us, you do not want to watch the resulting film, seeing banks of phone screens in the shot. Therefore, to help our film crew, we will make the huge floor at La Défense completely Yondr phone free so we can ensure the show – and of course all of you in the crowd – look as phenomenal as possible on camera!
In the rest of the venue we are requesting that fans once again keep their phones in their pockets and enjoy the show ‘in the moment’, rather than raise their phone in the air trying to film sections and thus inconveniencing those around them. So if a so-called fan near you thinks they are special and filming what they selfishly want please just ask them, very politely of course, to put their phone somewhere the sun doesn’t shine!
And, as I mentioned before, for all our fans outside Europe, we most definitely have not forgotten you and have some big announcements coming later for 2026. Rest assured we will be visiting as many of you as possible next year, before the band take a well-earned break from the road in 2027.”
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES EUROPEAN TOUR DATES 2026
MAY 2026
23 Athens, GREECE – OAKA
26 Sofia, BULGARIA – Vasil Levski Stadium
28 Bucharest, ROMANIA – Arena Națională
30 Bratislava, SLOVAKIA – Národný Futbalový Štadión
JUNE 2026
02 Hannover, GERMANY – Heinz von Heiden Arena
10 Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS – Ziggo Dome
17 Milan, ITALY – San Siro Stadium
22 Paris, FRANCE – Paris La Défense Arena
28 Lyon – Décines, FRANCE – Groupama Stadium
JULY 2026
07 Lisbon, PORTUGAL – Estádio da Luz
11 UK Headline Show – Details to be revealed
Finally, due to the popularity of the inclusive, free access Eddie’s Official Pop-Up Dive Bars, we will be expanding this concept further in as many show cities as possible and creating a unique space for fans to gather prior and post show. They will be serving Trooper Beer and Darkest Red wine, with food, exclusive merch and further entertainment. Details will be available on ironmaiden.com at a later date.
Tickets go on sale w/c 22nd September, see ironmaiden.com
On December 8, 2024, IRON MAIDEN announced Dawson as its new touring drummer.
A native of Suffolk, England, Simon first teamed up with Harris back in 2012. He debuted on three tracks on the first album from Steve‘s BRITISH LION project and all of BRITISH LION‘s second LP, the critically acclaimed “The Burning”, plus the many subsequent tours in the U.S., Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Mexico and South America.
In January 2023, Nicko was at his home in Boca Raton when he suffered a stroke with partial paralysis.
When Nicko first went public with his stroke in August 2023, the drummer said in a statement that the episode left him “paralyzed” down one side of his body and “worried” that his career with the band was over.
Five years ago, McBrain was diagnosed with stage 1 laryngeal cancer and opened up about it in a single interview in 2021 but otherwise kept it mostly under wraps. The musician received his cancer diagnosis after undergoing an endoscopy at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University Of Miami Health System and the Miller School of Medicine. Within a week, McBrain‘s cancer was surgically removed and he now gets check-ups every few months to make sure the cancer hasn’t returned.
Despite the fact that he was stepping away from touring, McBrain said that he would remain closely connected to IRON MAIDEN and continue to be involved in “a variety of projects” with the band, while also focusing on personal ventures and his existing businesses.
McBrain joined IRON MAIDEN in 1982, replacing Clive Burr, who had performed on the group’s first three albums.
McBrain addressed his health issues during an appearance on a recent episode of The Washington Tattoo podcast. He said: “It happened on January the 19th last year. I was actually having cataract surgery that day. And I guess there was a lot of stress and angst, with somebody messing with your peepers. And I was getting them both done at the same time. In the old days, I’d do one at a time just in case it didn’t work. You’d be walking around blind in one eye, not both. And I had it on good authority that’s the only reason they don’t like to do, even today, both at the same time. But I had confidence in the surgeon, with the way they do it nowadays. And I said, ‘Oh, can I get done both at the same time?’ ‘Yeah, no problem.'”
He continued: “Anyway. So I remember I was watching some tennis on the telly. I was up at six o’clock in the morning, which is unusual for me, ’cause I get up about 7:00, 7:30 nowadays. And I got up and I was a little bit anxious. And I lazed on the chaise lounge, and I went to sleep. About eight o’clock I thought, ‘I’m gonna have a nap. I feel really tired.’ And I woke up about 45 minutes later, and I’d had this stroke. And I thought it was pins and needles, but I couldn’t feel the pins and needles. I picked my arm up, going, ‘What’s going on here?’ And I could feel (the arm) but nothing was happening… And I let my arm go and it just dropped, and I’m, like, ‘Oh, shit. Something ain’t right.’ And it didn’t paralyze my leg, although my leg was wobbly. Which is a good thing, because my foot still worked. At least one saving grace — God gave me my right foot. It’s not quite as good as it was, but… Anyway, I went to the doctors, or they took me to the hospital. I had a whole team of people work around me. It was like I was a superstar. And they didn’t even know who I was. That’s the sort of treatment that everybody gets when they have a stroke and they go to the Boca Baptist Hospital, (Baptist Health) Boca (Raton) Regional (Hospital). They have a crew of, like, 12 people around you instantly, no matter who you are. And so after the MRI — they did a CT scan, then I went to an MRI. And (when) I came out, (Marc A) Swerdloff, my neurologist doctor, he had a plethora of students around him, and he had about six kids, young ‘uns — I call them kids; they’re probably all in their 20s or 30s. Anyway, he goes, you’ve had a stroke, Mr. McBrain, I went, ‘Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.’ And he laughed. And he said, ‘It’s a TIA.’ I said, ‘Okay, so it’s not a major stroke.’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘We’ve got this drug called TNK (tenecteplase),’ which, what it stands for I’ve no idea. And he said it’s a clot buster, and it prevents any further damage being done to your brain that may have or that has already occurred. He said, ‘But there’s a risk.’ And I said, ‘What’s the risk?’ He said, ‘You could die.’ I went, ‘Okay. So what’s the percentage of failure from people (treated with intravenous tenecteplase)?’ It (was) seven to nine percent. He says, ‘So if you have it, we have to put you in intensive care for 24 hours and monitor you every hour.’ And I went, ‘Well, okay, let’s have it.’ He says, ‘Sign here.’ And I’m right-handed, so I had to put a cross. And he said, ‘Just make out as much as you can.’ I sort of squiggled my name on a line. He gave it to me outside the MRI. About three hours later, I’m upstairs. And finally, I could move my thumb a little bit — the first thing I could move. I was in for two nights, and the day after I got out, I went for therapy, and I had three physiotherapies a week and OT, occupational therapy. My scapula had dropped and apparently my face was down here, although I could talk. So the only thing I had was a paralysis.”
McBrain added: “The first three months of a stroke is where you have the most recovery. After that, the next three months, it’s a little less and then the three months after that, and so on and so forth. I’m over — almost a year and a half now, but it will be next week. What’s the date? Yeah, 10 days’ time. So I’m still not back to where I wanna be. I’ve probably got… I can’t do, I can’t do… So if this is a tempo, I can’t do a 16-note roll going into 32nd-note rolls anymore. What happens is I can play eighth notes, like that kind of groove. I can do doubles, but when I try and play that 16th at that speed, instead of going up and down, it wobbles from left to right, when I start playing fast, when I try to play fast. So I’ve had to adjust my fills now. I mean, I don’t play ‘The Trooper’ fill anymore because I can’t get it… It’s the speed of it. I can do everything slow, but I’ve had to make sure that as long as I can keep the groove of the song, which is normally…”
Elaborating on how his stroke has affected his playing, Nicko said: “We had the rehearsal (for the spring 2023 MAIDEN tour) starting in April (of 2023), end of April. So I had that three months — March, February, March, April. I had 12 weeks of recovery, basically, before I went and had rehearsal. And, so today my routine now is I do the eight on eight to warm up and try and get my fingers working, but they’re not… I’m at the stage now where I’ve peaked. I’ve noticed in some of the rehearsals — I play with the TITANIUM TART (side-project) band I’ve got, which are doing the same set that I’m playing with MAIDEN later this year; we’re doing exactly the same set. I’ve got a couple of gigs coming up this weekend. We rehearse once a week. I’ve got a rehearsal tonight and tomorrow. So, I’m allowed to be out to try these things out. And they’re not working. So, I’ve reverted back to what I was doing with the band last year, which was playing straighter on those kind of fills. (The song) ‘Fear Of The Dark’, I’m getting the triplets again and a couple of the hi-hats snap. Those kind of things. It’s all about the tempo of the songs. When they’re fast, I have a struggle. When they’re slow, I can do it.”
McBrain previously talked about his post-ministroke recovery last December in an interview with Metal Hammer magazine. At the time, he said: “Well, it was very, very difficult. When it first happened, I thought, ‘This is it. I’m not going to be able to play. I’ve got a tour coming up in three months’ time.’ I had a lot of time for reflection in the hospital. My wife was really my bastion of strength and encouragement and she was with me throughout. I did a lot of strength exercises, a lot of stretches with weird weights that they have and I got my stamina back.”
McBrain told Metal Hammer that his MAIDEN bandmates, especially bassist Steve Harris, were very supportive during his recovery.
“Through all this period of time I was in touch with Steve, obviously all the guys, and I’d have a bit of a chat with them on the phone and they were all very, very encouraging, and none more so than Steve,” Nicko said. “He said, ‘Look, the most important thing is that you get well and work on getting yourself together.'”
Last October, Nicko spoke about his latest health scare during an appearance on SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation Power Trip Special”. Asked how the shows on MAIDEN’s “The Future Past Tour” have been, Nicko said: “It’s going great. It started off a little shaky for me, but as the time went on and the more shows we performed, I started to get a little bit more strength and they’d been really rocking out well. And the last couple of months have been fantastic.”
The 72-year-old McBrain also talked about his recovery in more detail and touched upon how his health setback affected his drumming. He said: “I’m doing good right now. I’m still probably — I’d say I’m 85 to 90 percent back to strength, but I still have a little less dexterity with speed in my fingers. My fingers are the ones that — this is the last thing to strengthen up. But I had to change certain drum fills. Some fills that everybody knows me for on certain songs, I’ve had to improvise those at rehearsals to be able to actually play the songs. So now I’m starting to actually be able to kind of embrace it a bit more. And I can’t do that live. I have to wait until we start doing some rehearsals again or whatever it is. But I’m definitely getting stronger. And I’ve had great support from (MAIDEN manager) Rod (Smallwood), the band, and all of the fans out there. They’ve been absolutely — they’ve shown me so much love, it’s amazing.”
When Nicko first went public with his stroke in August 2023, the drummer said in a statement that the episode left him “paralyzed” down one side of his body and “worried” that his career with the band was over.
McBrain‘s statement read as follows: “I hope this message finds you all well!
“The reason I’m writing to you all today is to let you know of a very serious health problem that I have been through. In January I had a stroke, thank the Lord it was a minor one referred to as a TIA. It left me paralyzed on my right side from my shoulder on down, of course I was very worried that my career was over but with the love and support from my wife, Rebecca and family, my doctors, especially Julie my OT (Occupational Therapist), and my MAIDEN family I was able to bounce back to somewhere near 70% recovered. After 10 weeks of intense therapy it was almost time to start rehearsals for our tour.
“I feel it’s important to let you know about this now instead of earlier as I was mainly concerned with doing my job and concentrating on getting back to 100% fitness. I’m not there yet but by the grace of God I’m getting better and stronger as the weeks go by.
“Thank you all for a most wonderful and magical tour so far, you have all been so amazing.
“Well that’s it from me. God bless you all, stay safe and well and I look forward to seeing you all somewhere in time. “
Smallwood added: “The rest of the band and l think that what Nicko has been able to achieve since his stroke shows incredible belief and willpower and we are all very proud of him. With this new and musically very complex set to learn ahead of him, he just got his head down and concentrated on recovery. We honestly did not know if he would be able to play a whole show until band rehearsals started in May and there was just so much support for him from the band and then genuine relief for all when we saw he was going to be able to do it!
“Nicko being Nicko he did not want to make a fuss and cause any distraction to the tour at the time but, now that he is sure he will soon get there, he thought you fans should know straight from him rather than by any rumours! We are all of course delighted he battled through this so well and look forward to many more tours together!”
Four years ago, McBrain was diagnosed with stage 1 laryngeal cancer and opened up about it in a single interview in 2021 but otherwise kept it mostly under wraps. The musician received his cancer diagnosis after undergoing an endoscopy at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University Of Miami Health System and the Miller School of Medicine. Within a week, McBrain‘s cancer was surgically removed and he now gets check-ups every few months to make sure the cancer hasn’t returned.
McBrain, who had the cancer in a part of his vocal cords, isn’t the first member of MAIDEN to beat cancer. Back in late 2014, IRON MAIDEN‘s Bruce Dickinson was diagnosed with throat cancer. The singer, who had a golf gall-size tumor on his tongue and another in the lymph node on the right side of his neck, got the all-clear in May 2015 after radiation and nine weeks of chemotherapy.
In a 2015 interview with Overdrive, McBrain admitted that he thought MAIDEN was over when it was discovered that Dickinson had a cancerous tumor. “Well, I’d be a liar if I didn’t think for a minute that IRON MAIDEN was finished,” he said. “But I thought more about the possibility of losing my friend than anything else, to be honest. Then later, I was thinking, ‘God forbid if the worst ever happened, the legacy would be the last 16 albums.'”
McBrain, who is a dedicated Christian, continued: “I’ve got to be honest, I did question his mortality at one point and thankfully that didn’t last long. Honestly, I got down on my knees and said a prayer, picked my thoughts up and got positive about it all, thinking to myself, ‘If anyone can beat this, it’s Bruce.’ He’s so positive about everything he’s ever done in his life, or whatever he is about to do. Basically, I prayed for him and my prayers were answered, as well as everybody else that knows and cares for him.”
IRON MAIDEN‘s last album “Senjutsu” came out in September 2021 on Warner records. It marked MAIDEN‘s second consecutive double album behind 2015’s “The Book Of Souls” which is the longest MAIDEN album, with a running time of 92 minutes.
The full track listing is:
01. Senjutsu (8:20) (Smith/Harris)
02. Stratego (4:59) (Gers/Harris)
03. The Writing On The Wall (6:13) (Smith/Dickinson)
04. Lost In A Lost World (9:31) (Harris)
05. Days Of Future Past (4:03) (Smith/Dickinson)
06. The Time Machine (7:09) (Gers/Harris)
07. Darkest Hour (7:20) (Smith/Dickinson)
08. Death Of The Celts (10:20) (Harris)
09. The Parchment (12:39) (Harris)
10. Hell On Earth (11:19) (Harris)
“Senjutsu” was released on the following formats and available to order/save at www.ironmaiden.com:
* Standard 2CD Digipak
* Deluxe 2CD Book Format
* Deluxe heavyweight 180G Triple Black Vinyl
* Special Edition Triple Silver And Black Marble Vinyl (Details to follow)
* Special Edition Triple Red and Black Marble Vinyl (Details to follow)
* Super Deluxe Boxset featuring CD, Blu Ray and Exclusive Memorabilia
* Digital album [streaming and download]
IRON MAIDEN hadn’t released any fresh music since 2015’s “The Book Of Souls” LP, which was recorded in late 2014 in Paris, France with Shirley.
“The Book Of Souls” was the longest MAIDEN album, clocking in at 92 minutes, with lyrics heavily based in the themes of death, reincarnation, the soul and mortality.
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